Bruce Banner (Earth-513)
Early Life Robert Bruce Banner was the son of an alcoholic who deeply hated him. Banner's mother showed much affection for her child, who returned her love, but this only served to fuel his father's rage. Dr. Brian Banner was an atomic physicist who worked on producing clean nuclear power as an energy source, but he was afraid his exposure to it mutated his son's genes. Bruce showed signs of high intelligence at an early age which strengthened his father's belief. Brian became abusive to Bruce and when his mother intervened, Brian murdered her. He frightened Bruce to keep quiet, but his own bragging landed him in a psychiatric institute. As a child Bruce was withdrawn, possibly developing a split personality to help deal with his pain and rage. His only happiness came from spending time with his cousin Jennifer Walters. Bruce found it hard to develop friendships and often found himself on the receiving end of physical abuse at the hands of school bullies. One such incident sparked him to build and plant a bomb in the basement of his school. The bomb was a dud, and Bruce was expelled. This lead him to Marvel High. Becoming The Hulk During his time at school, Bruce spent a ot of time with research on gamma rays and their effects on living cells. Due to the rather limited equipment at Marvel High, he was not able to do experiments connected to his research. After becoming best friends with Janet van Dyne, Bruce got to know her father, he famous scientist Dr. Vernon van Dyne, and started to conduct experiments together with him. Some time and some experiments later, Bruce had gained Dr. van Dyne's trust and was allowed to do his own experiment at the van Dyne's lab. Unfortunately the experiment went wrong due to an accident with the equipment and it resulted in Bruce being faced with the full amount of gamma rays which saved his life in the explosion but also turned him into The Hulk, a huge green monster who's only thought seems to be the destruction of everything in his path. The next few days had Bruce turning into The Hulk several times in the city, which led to the deaths of several police officers when they tried to capture The Hulk, and Bruce trying to shoot himself, without success obviously. Finally Nick Fury located him in an alley in the city and brought him to a secret facility on an island. Bruce offered no resistance when it came to conducting tests on him, and even pushed the scientists further, in order to get rid of this monster inside of him. After a failed pain tolerance test, he returned to school with the help of his boyfriend Jean-Paul Beaubier. Power and Abilities Bruce Banner Bruce Banner is a genius in nuclear physics, possessing a mind so brilliant that it cannot be measured on any known intelligence test. When Banner is the Hulk, Banner's consciousness is buried within the Hulk's, and can influence the Hulk's behavior only to a very limited extent. The Hulk The Hulk possesses an incredible level of superhuman physical ability. His capacity for physical strength is potentially limitless due to the fact that the Hulk's strength increases proportionally with his level of great emotional stress, anger in particular. The Hulk uses his superhumanly strong leg muscles to leap great distances. The Hulk has been known to cover hundreds of miles in a single bound and once leaped almost into orbit around the Earth. The Hulk can also use his superhumanly leg muscles to run at super speeds, although his legs have limitless strength he does not have limitless speed and once he reaches a certain speed his legs become too strong and destroy the ground giving him no friction to run on, therefore he jumps to travel. The Hulk has shown a high resistance to physical damage nearly regardless of the cause, and has also shown resistance to extreme temperatures, mind control, nuclear explosions, poisons, and all diseases. In addition to the regeneration of limbs, vital organs, and damaged or destroyed areas of tissue at an amazing rate. The Hulk also has superhuman endurance. The Hulk's body also has a gland that makes an "oxygenated per fluorocarbon emulsion", which creates pressure in the Hulk's lungs and effectively lets him breathe underwater and move quickly between varying depths without concerns about decompression or nitrogen narcosis.